Heads Up: John Warner; Exxon

The Virginia Senator

John Warner’s career in the US Senate bookended the Republican Party’s short era of dominance in Virginia. He was narrowly elected in 1978, in a state which favored conservative Democrats; and retired from the US Senate in 2009. He was certainly part of the Defense establishment, which once held economic and political power in Virginia; the submarine USS John Warner (SSN-785) is named in his honor. He drew support from across the political spectrum, running unopposed in 2002. Before his retirement, the nascent Tea Party movement branded this popular moderate as a RINO (Republican in Name Only). John Warner was indeed a RINO: “Reasonable, Intelligent, Nice and Open-minded”.

Warner's death comes at an inflection point as the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) attempts to rebuilt from a lost decade of nominating Tea Party and Trumpist candidates, who failed to win any statewide election since 2009. If proof is found in pudding, these rural hardliners typically lost their November elections by 10 points or more; while mainstream candidates in 2013 and 2014 fell just one point short of victory. The RPV is optimistic for this year’s races, as the nominees are both diverse and chosen by suburban voters, who have marched towards the Democrats in the past decade. John Warner was richly eulogized by the nominees, showing that the late Senator is a model to be followed. 

 

Exxon Going Green?

This one is personal to me, as I dumped this laggard of a stock last year. Shareholders put Jeffrey Ubben of Value Act Capital onto Exxon's Board of Directors, in hopes of bringing the large corporation up to par in the future of energy. Ubben's unique thinking is that an "oil company" can be part of a "Responsible Investing" (ESG-focused) portfolio.  For other petroleum companies, the transition to green energy is nothing new. BP (British Petroleum) had long styled itself as "beyond petroleum", embracing a green sunflower as its logo.

The Fascist Moment

 In the manifestos of various nutjobs, there is a common theme favoring increased control of society, particularly in areas of immigration and family policy. To the disenfranchised, these radical solutions offer false hope of increased status and wealth. It would be easy to ignore the effect of such writings, but for the fact that crazed manifestos have enabled great evils in the past, from Mein Kampf to the writings of Dylan Klebold. Dare I say, we did have a Beta-Test of fascism in America, an unintended consequence of the national coronavirus response strategy.

At a fundamental level, fascists are miserable because you are outwardly happy. Their grievances often come from perception of deficit in their social lives, and they fantasize ways to remove joy and spontaneity from relationships, including hook-up culture. As an example of pattern rupture, the year-long government shutdowns of “non-essential” businesses such as bars and concert venues in many states may permanently alter what it means “to go out” for an evening. While social activities have moved from public spaces to private settings (at one service academy, daytime liberty on weekends resulted in a 15% COVID infection rate after just two months), researchers have found increased malaise among young adults. This may be confounded with other factors like lack of hiring in well-paying jobs.

Halting immigration from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia has featured in multiple extremist manifestos. The national border is sealed with policies reminiscent of the isolationist 1930s. Based on the adjusted travel patterns of my peer group, I would surmise that most international travelers and immigrants today are coming to the US from Europe, rather than the Global South.

Record Gun Sales- Gun ownership has increased, especially among women and racial minorities Some Leftist groups have embraced gun ownership, often as a response to the outwardly firearm-toting Far Right groups. It is impossible to stereotype who might be armed today. Notably, the new generation of firearm owners, predominantly urban or suburban dwellers, have purchased firearms for reasons other than hunting. Marksmanship, tactical training and self-defense have grown in prominence: this disassembled militia appears in manifesto writings.

Inequitable Health Outcomes- Higher COVID death rates among disfavored groups represents a racially and socioeconomically unequal loss of life. COVID infection crossed all walks of life, as seen in how the virus first spread through the global jet-set. But those with less reserves, in wealth or health, were more likely to perish.  Social Darwinist policies are frequently invoked in manifestos.  

Discussing birth rates during a prolonged crisis is a difficult subject, because of conflicting mainstream philosophies. On one hand, it is seen as the “responsible choice” to delay childbearing until one’s socioeconomic situation improves. In the other stream of thought, childbearing is life’s most essential activity, and minimal constraints should apply: in the religious context, this would include marriage between biological parents. As many of my friends are in this stage of life, I am interested to see how countermeasures applied in the Spring of 2020, such as no-visitation policies in maternity wards, affected the rate of home births; or if it caused couples to be discouraged, resulting in a birth rate drop this past Winter. What the evidence shows is that couples have postponed childrearing, except for the wealthiest young adults (see Refinery29, Insider). Survival of the fittest, much?

Reversion to traditional gender roles: Celebration of the family puts a softer edge on the general bluntness of fascist policies. Women, though, tend to bear the strain in domestic workload and missed career opportunities. As modern resources that enabled the two-income household became unavailable; be it daycare centers, grandparents, foreign au-pairs, and, yes, public schools; one parent had to step back from full-time work. In the past, it was assumed that a woman would take up domestic responsibilities; today, income, stability, and now, essentialness, are hashed out between the couple. Egalitarianism is to let the math speak for itself, and most often, Dad keeps pursuing his career.

Hopefully, the experience of the past year and a half has debunked any thoughts that fascism is a viable solution to the political difficulties in the United States. High-priority issues that have come to the fore-front in national discussion are learning and skills loss, alleviation of childhood poverty, and newfound respect for individual freedom.  There appears to be bipartisan agreement in saying “never again”, with regard to the challenges people and the nation have endured.

Two Slaveries and the Church

 

Waging the long spiritual fight against communism in Eastern Europe and Greater China left little room for self-reflection, which has now come to the forefront of Catholic consciousness. If the Church had the power to initiate an orderly transition from communism to democracy in Eastern Europe, what power did it have, and did not use, to end human slavery? From today’s lenses, the Catholic Churches’ role in 1800’s slavery appears to be participation and implicit approval. This must be reconciled.

Looking back to the 1890s, in the same papacy of Pope Leo XIII, the Church made a switch from being soft on chattel slavery to being tough on the mental slavery of Marxist communism. By this time, the Church had been stripped of its earthly powers, particularly the papal holdings in Italy (prompting the Leonine Prayers in the Traditional Latin Mass). The world changed greatly at the dawn of the 20^th century. France underwent secularization around 1905. Hereditary monarchy was discredited after WWI. For centuries and millennia, monarchs held a special place in state religions, setting the ‘tone’ for the population, and occasionally practicing intolerance towards religious minorities in their realm. For the Church, there was a real threat that monarchy across Europe would be replaced by communism, as happened in Russia. If monarchy was obsolete, and communism intolerable; then democracy, or transitional autocracy (as in Portugal, Spain or the Republic of China), had to be embraced. Unlike most events in world history, the people would decide, through ballot box or popular uprising, their self-determination.  

 In previous generations, the Church’s worldly concerns as landlord and investor had created a close intertwining of Church and the Spanish and French colonies, where chattel slavery was a common practice.  In theory, slaves in French and Spanish colonies had more rights than slaves in English and Islamic areas. In French practice, mixed-race children were born free; while this was not the case in the American South at large. In practice, life was harsh for all agricultural slaves. Work in the Caribbean sugar plantations was known to be a virtual death sentence. Would the Church have placated itself on false platitudes? Emphasis on pastoral care emerged in the late 1800s, with focus on various groups such as immigrants, Black Americans, and Pacific Islanders. In this context, a focus on human liberation became a natural outcrop of charitable work to feed, educate, and care for the disadvantaged. Leo XIII’s successor, the pauper-born Pope Pius X, would understand that proclamations of human dignity had to be backed by action.